While the largest entertainment companies are doing their best at censoring the web in the US through the suggested PROTECT IP Act, corporate-sponsored filtering has already come into life in the United Kingdom due to what might become to as a landmark court case.

Now it can be said legally that the web got a little more censored. The British media reported that Hollywood had recently won a major court case in which they were able to compel Internet service providers to block access to virtually any website they want in the name of fighting copyright violation. In this case there was general access to online service known as NewzBin2, which offered an index of NZB files. The matter is that the NZB files point to a file uploaded to file-sharing network UseNet. It is a little like a .torrent file, but it isn’t stored on other people’s PCs, but rather on a server or several of them.

So, by granting the entertainment industry the right to block access to NewzBin2, the only thing the court ruling really does is enable international corporations to censor the web in the United Kingdom. In fact, blocking the service won’t amount to anything in the end except a temporary minor inconvenience for some Internet users.

The most interesting in the judge’s ruling was his words that the UK Internet service provider BT had actual knowledge of subscribers using its service in order to infringe copyright. In other words, it knew that the Internet users and Newbin2 owners infringed copyright on a large scale. Even when BT had argued that the service in question also linked to legitimate content, the court said it was far outweighed by pirated content. So, the judge suggested that Internet service providers knew what everyone on their network was doing, like the operators of a major subway network knew precisely where everyone in the network was going. Meanwhile, even scarier was the suggestion that legitimate material was no excuse to stop the filtering of a site.

The bizarre part of the story is that the censorship of NewzBin2 will be enforced only in a few months. This will undoubtedly give the service lots of time to find out how to bypass the measure for its British users. In future, activities like this may affect users willing to use the web for legitimate purposes, but it is very unlikely that it’ll manage to even come close to putting a dent on file-sharing.

See this where it will go. Censorship to the max. Soon a major news agency who has a news web page can say that small site has the same news story they are infringing on our story it must be censored. Soon they censor everything but what they want you to see just like the television news. This same idea can be used for anything they want to keep you from enjoying.

luckily all news entities get their news from the same sources.
there are a few networks that have their own reporters, but in general, all the news comes from only a couple sources, like AP and Reuters.
the only thing the broadcasters, tv, radio, and web sites do is package it up and present it to the public in the format and way they want it to be given to the poor unsuspecting people that believe them.
its unimaginable that the USEnet would be targeted for piracy, when the porn and child porn is a much larger problem on USEnet. but you don't hear anyone saying lets block USEnet for the child porn.
this only shows how biased towards the rich and powerful the court is, and how little the people and for this example, children matter.
but, in the UK, people should be used to the government screwing with their lives, with the constant threat of being sectioned over their heads all the time and for any reason just to control people, and the snooty higher echelon making laws or whatever for their own purposes and by their opinions rather than fact.

I am always amazed at how corporations convince the government to go after individuals that have servers registered in other countries, YET, the same governments seem to be helpless when going after taxes owed my these very same corporations just because the corporations have registered their business's in other countries.Seems what is good for the goose, should be good for the gander,,,,,,,,, right?